Guild Wars 2

Swagger.1459:

JTGuevara.9018:

Swagger.1459:

JTGuevara.9018:

Let’s review our history. We lost Minstrels, Mercenary, Soldiers and NOW Clerics.

What’s the next amulet on the chopping block? Menders? Sage? It seems like every amulet removed is a defensive one. Do we just hate defense/support? Do we just like to spam DPS to death without a second thought? At what point, do we realize, that removing amulets will NOT solve the problem? At what point do we realize the OBVIOUS problem? Balance and HoT builds.

HoT builds simply do too much damage. The amount of conditions they pump out is absurd. With the removal of clerics, it’s even WORSE. Removing clerics did nothing but kill support builds and especially Eles. We’re killing builds, folks.

It’s not a “hot” problem… It’s that the developers do not make any serious reinvestments back to profession development. Anet obviously devotes very little resources to classes and the combat systems. The “paths of least resistance” balancing is what we get and that’s unfortunate because Anet could have one of the top fantasy mmo class and combat systems if the top made it a priority.

No, it IS a HoT problem, but yes I agree with your other point as well.

Hot was designed with increased difficulty in mind and the devs tailored elites to that content. The real issue is that CORE professions need improvement, not a “hot stuff needs a nerf”. The devs had the intention of squashing the zerker meta and putting more roles in the game, as well as filling some role and combat style gaps with each profession. It’s long process that they started not too long ago and they are obviously facing some “growing pains” judging by the profession patch notes.

I was a long time and hardcore pvper once, but gw2 broke that habit because pvp modes are messy due to the pve profession designs, pve combat rules, tons of clunky skill designs, poor combat UI, lack of playable roles, lack of development by the staff… The devs need to go back to square one and reenvision classes and combat here or it goes nowhere. Again, it’s not a “hot” problem, it’s a “the decision makers needs to care about the profession and combat experiences” problem, and devote some serious person power to make something good out of it.

Eh. Not really. Core still functions fine to beat the new content. I did it just fine, and as have others.

There’s already enough power creep, and it started emerging a long time before elite specs. The game was more balanced way back then because the classes were designed to not be so powerful back then. There were few passive abilities and overall, you could pretty-easily punish any build. They’ve since added a lot to the game and its combat, and with greater complexity comes greater difficulty in simplifying it in both the objective and subjective natures of multi-faceted design such as balance. Obviously those leading the balancing efforts are not capable of the task with the power creep and poor decisions we’ve seen emerging lately. That said, just adding more won’t get anyone anywhere.

I like the way it’s not even a bulleted point in the patch notes. They just kinda throw it in there. Like “o yea, and there’s no more clerics in the game.” it’s a massive decision to take healers out of the game, and they treat it as a non-point, as proven in their not bulleting it. Guess im off to wvw until they screw that up.

For those of you who think HoT is the problem, think again. Maybe of us pvp veterans were told that HoT was the solution with the addition of more cleanses and more boons, but that clearly hasn’t helped. So the problem existed well before HoT.

The first problem is that gw2 hands out conditions, boons, and passive abilities like candy, which encourages passive, sloppy play. Not to mention, condis (or boons in other metas) are far more potent than the condi cleanses/boon stripping used to control them.

Second, conquest maps are garbage. They discourage actual pvp by emphasizing point captures instead of player interaction. And with no SoloQ, teams are inherently imbalanced in terms of coordination. Courtyard might not have been such a terrible map if it were always 5 random players vs 5 random players. There is absolutely no variety. And it takes ANET a long time before scrapping bad ideas. I don’t even queue for Stronghold anymore.

Third, ANET is attempting the impossible by keeping pvp and pve skills the same. The game modes are completely different. Having dozens of stacks of boons in pve is fine for some of GW2’s epic content, but that just does not work in pvp. Splitting these skills is the ONLY way to keep the power creep under control. Otherwise, when you nerf something in pvp, it needlessly suffers in pve, too. Similarly, buffing underused skills in pve dramatically alters balance in pvp. This couldn’t be demonstrated more than with the “balance” in wvw. It’s non-existent. Spvp is better-balanced, but the more a pvp mode resembles pve, the more the balance suffers because the skills you’re given in pve are meant for fundamentally different encounters.

Fourth, and worst of all, balance doesn’t happen often enough. These quarterly updates are great for content, but balance requires shaving. You CANNOT balance everything in one go every few months. There are way too many variables for that to be effective. Worse still is that you may inadvertently neuter a build or class (like Eles), forcing players to wait for months before changes are made.

I have a lot of respect for GW2, but this balance philosophy has been ruining GW2 for a long time.

EDIT: I should add that class roles also overlap way too much. If it were up to me, I’d rethink what roles I want each class to have and redesign the class around those roles. For example, if Necros are supposed to be the kings of conditions, why can every other class dish out more condi damage than the necro? You might argue Necros are supposed to be the Kings of condi transfers, but then what good is that in pve? The class roles are so blurry right now that many classes can dish out tons of boons or conditions, with the only “role” for a class almost relegated to ONE skill (e.g., Mesmers as portal bots).

ele has been nerfed in traits and skills

what was the reason to remove the cleric amulett then?
has been no problem for almost 4 years

Well said. You gave a general depiction of pvp issues.

Vinegaroon.4369:

I like the way it’s not even a bulleted point in the patch notes. They just kinda throw it in there. Like “o yea, and there’s no more clerics in the game.” it’s a massive decision to take healers out of the game, and they treat it as a non-point, as proven in their not bulleting it. Guess im off to wvw until they screw that up.

The biggest changes for almost every patch are points they basically gloss over. Just look back at when they made immobilize durations stack… it seriously hurt pvp and was only mentioned like it was an afterthought.

Also, you act like WvW isn’t already screwed up. It is a shell of what it once was, as they have killed it with a combination of power-creep and inattention. Throwing it some attention recently is a matter of too little WAY WAY WAY WAY too late.

JTGuevara.9018:

Sinmir.6504:

I think the Cleric Amulet needed to go, they got rid of Soldier, Soldier made you yourself sustainable but with Cleric people could heal 5 door breakers faster than a trebuchet could damage them. Usually hitting them twice with it is enough, a healer could pretty much negate the trebuchet damage. Magi, well it has vitality instead of toughness and precision instead of power. I can imagine a lot of healers will pay the gold and unlock it. Would like to see it go as well as it has the same healing power as Cleric so could be used to keep enemy NPCs alive pretty much indefinitely. Either that or bring back cleric but nerf the Tempest and Druid healing abilities beyond recognition. Nothing wrong with making them able to heal so that door breakers can survive an extra hit or so from the treb but not much more than that.

That’s the thing I’m talking about! The amulet wasn’t the problem, it was the healing in STRONGHOLD. Wouldn’t it make more sense to fix STRONGHOLD than delete an amulet that was NEVER A PROBLEM in the history of this game?

So what you’re saying is, instead of changing the ele to fit in better with the world, you want the entire world to change so that it revolves around the ele.

Got it.

Sinmir.6504:

I think the Cleric Amulet needed to go, they got rid of Soldier, Soldier made you yourself sustainable but with Cleric people could heal 5 door breakers faster than a trebuchet could damage them. Usually hitting them twice with it is enough, a healer could pretty much negate the trebuchet damage. Magi, well it has vitality instead of toughness and precision instead of power. I can imagine a lot of healers will pay the gold and unlock it. Would like to see it go as well as it has the same healing power as Cleric so could be used to keep enemy NPCs alive pretty much indefinitely. Either that or bring back cleric but nerf the Tempest and Druid healing abilities beyond recognition. Nothing wrong with making them able to heal so that door breakers can survive an extra hit or so from the treb but not much more than that.

If they deleted an entire amulet only because of stronghold, a failed pvp map, then I would be flabbergasted.

Amulets are holding sPvP back.

The problem is Anet’s management. PvP and class balance teams are completely separate, so the only thing the PvP team can do is remove amulets. This is stupid.

Ross Biddle.2367:

JTGuevara.9018:

Sinmir.6504:

I think the Cleric Amulet needed to go, they got rid of Soldier, Soldier made you yourself sustainable but with Cleric people could heal 5 door breakers faster than a trebuchet could damage them. Usually hitting them twice with it is enough, a healer could pretty much negate the trebuchet damage. Magi, well it has vitality instead of toughness and precision instead of power. I can imagine a lot of healers will pay the gold and unlock it. Would like to see it go as well as it has the same healing power as Cleric so could be used to keep enemy NPCs alive pretty much indefinitely. Either that or bring back cleric but nerf the Tempest and Druid healing abilities beyond recognition. Nothing wrong with making them able to heal so that door breakers can survive an extra hit or so from the treb but not much more than that.

That’s the thing I’m talking about! The amulet wasn’t the problem, it was the healing in STRONGHOLD. Wouldn’t it make more sense to fix STRONGHOLD than delete an amulet that was NEVER A PROBLEM in the history of this game?

So what you’re saying is, instead of changing the ele to fit in better with the world, you want the entire world to change so that it revolves around the ele.

Got it.

That’s kind of already what happened. Removing amulets technically affects everyone.

Play the long game. Let ele fall gracefully back into the trash bin, and they’ll put out some buffs next quarter. They’re getting better at actually putting out balance changes, so it won’t stay in the trash bin for too long.

JediSange.1645:

That build was problematic. From the start, they said they wanted to avoid a trinity. Having Elementalists with one viable sPvP build and that being a dedicated healer is not a good place to be. This is the first step to a better PvP environment, methinks. I could be wrong, but at this point I’m just repeating my same point in several different threads. I will let it be and see how it plays out for now.

That build was problematic?

Before HoT eles were enjoying a “dps” meta with fire line being viable, then they nerf the fire line heavily and introduce a strong support bunker elite..then they nerf this elite as deemed too strong..basically they don’t want eles to be neither dps or support viable at the same level of other professions, they want a weaker jolly good profession for some reason.

With this level of logic, anybody can become a game designer within a day

The removal of that Amulet instead of a slight rework is baffling.

I was gonna type a few sentences of constructive feedback but why bother? Just bums me out. I guess it’s time to play staff zerk for the lolz.

In the future ArenaNet: Please leave us preliminary patch notes as a guideline to what is coming so we can offer feedback. You guys do great stuff and then really drop the ball in an area. I get it. We’re all human and fallible, but the wholesale removal of amulets smacks of band-aid fixes. If you take something away from a profession, give it something in return that is immediately viable.

I miss seeing patch notes where something pops off the page while I’m downloading the patch and then can’t wait til it’s finished so I can try stuff out with it. There was nothing like that for the Ele this time. With all due respect, it comes off as half finished. I am sure you are all working your tails off to make this game the best that it can be, but there is zero way I personally could have sat in a room looking at the Ele on a piece of paper and thought to myself, “The Elementalist looks really good this patch” and that is precisely what should happen for every class every time. Full stop.

Removeing cleric was cind a stupid and I was all for cele removal give support amulet with hp main power and split vitality toughness than

Give players 3000 stat points (the total number on most amulets) to spend as we see fit. And add a soft-cap if needed (like 1200 or 1500 max spent on any one stat). Or bring in PvE gear to PvP. Either way will give us more diversity and I’ll bet balance won’t really be worse.

They honestly just have no idea how the class works. Look at the very design of tempest – the basic design was terrible from the start. Overloads killed the playstyle of the class, but were made necessary b/c they jacked the numbers up so high that they were necessary to keep up with the rest of HoT power-creep. Further, they cannibalized from future elite specs by tacking “auramancer” onto “storm mage” because they couldn’t come up with an original idea, so they just tacked on a bunch of auras.

With the most recent patches, they showed terrible balancing for ele by doing nothing for THREE seasons, then suddenly nerfing both sustain and DPS of unviable builds while at the same time gutting the only viable build. There weren’t any prior builds that could be run, and they offered no new toys that made you realize: they understand this leaves the current builds in a bad place but offers potential for a new direction. Then, they give two of the most worthless buffs in flamestrike and arcane shield. It is even a running joke among many professions that shatterstone will be buffed because it has received like 10 buffs and still is useless.

They had a whole year to add alternative defenses to ele back in 2013…and did exactly nothing with that time. They simply returned the class to exactly what it was before after a year of sitting in the dumpster.

So… they have not shown they can create anything other than an ele build that stacks every bit of defense and plays the attrition game, and have NEVER given meaningful dps ele buffs for pvp. Where do people get all this faith that making the class useless for another year is the first step to fixing it? Hell, look at warriors: they didn’t fix anything that plagued the class, they just tacked on a truly insane amount of self-healing for free and called it a day. They didn’t actually make the class variable, they just further power-crept it.

Nothing in development of eles or even recent development of other classes gives me ANY faith in ANet.

Celtus.8456:

Give players 3000 stat points (the total number on most amulets) to spend as we see fit. And add a soft-cap if needed (like 1200 or 1500 max spent on any one stat). Or bring in PvE gear to PvP. Either way will give us more diversity and I’ll bet balance won’t really be worse.

That’s a good idea, give us freedom of choice like most other games have instead of dictating to us what we are and are not allowed to use, & how we are and are not allowed to play, wonderful idea ( I don’t think anyone in charge will listen though, pretty sure they aren’t about fun, diversity and fairness, the exact opposite I’m afraid)

BlackBeard.2873:

They honestly just have no idea how the class works. Look at the very design of tempest – the basic design was terrible from the start. Overloads killed the playstyle of the class, but were made necessary b/c they jacked the numbers up so high that they were necessary to keep up with the rest of HoT power-creep. Further, they cannibalized from future elite specs by tacking “auramancer” onto “storm mage” because they couldn’t come up with an original idea, so they just tacked on a bunch of auras.

With the most recent patches, they showed terrible balancing for ele by doing nothing for THREE seasons, then suddenly nerfing both sustain and DPS of unviable builds while at the same time gutting the only viable build. There weren’t any prior builds that could be run, and they offered no new toys that made you realize: they understand this leaves the current builds in a bad place but offers potential for a new direction. Then, they give two of the most worthless buffs in flamestrike and arcane shield. It is even a running joke among many professions that shatterstone will be buffed because it has received like 10 buffs and still is useless.

They had a whole year to add alternative defenses to ele back in 2013…and did exactly nothing with that time. They simply returned the class to exactly what it was before after a year of sitting in the dumpster.

So… they have not shown they can create anything other than an ele build that stacks every bit of defense and plays the attrition game, and have NEVER given meaningful dps ele buffs for pvp. Where do people get all this faith that making the class useless for another year is the first step to fixing it? Hell, look at warriors: they didn’t fix anything that plagued the class, they just tacked on a truly insane amount of self-healing for free and called it a day. They didn’t actually make the class variable, they just further power-crept it.

Nothing in development of eles or even recent development of other classes gives me ANY faith in ANet.

Maybe it’s just time for some other class to hold Ele’s hand, instead of ele always holding everybody else’s ;D

~I’m unhelpful! :D

Swagger.1459:

Hot was designed with increased difficulty in mind and the devs tailored elites to that content.

Which is a non-argument, you could have precisely the same level of “difficulty” (quite how 10 man raids that can be completed by 5 or 6 guys are considered “difficult” is well…) in PvE with the core specs, you just adjust the content.

Swagger.1459:

The real issue is that CORE professions need improvement, not a “hot stuff needs a nerf”.

Not really, the combat was much more fun, more skilled, more varied and less tedious in core, HoT powercreep along with the change to 3 traitlines has wrecked what was the best thing about this game, the combat, which is part of the reason it continues to lose players from PvP/WvW.

I dont see a problem with deleting cleric its like when ppl QQ about merc amulet.

serj.8214:

I dont see a problem with deleting cleric its like when ppl QQ about merc amulet.

You’ve GOT to be kidding me. Clerics has been here since the BEGINNING and NOBODY had a problem with it! It is and always has been the HoT specs, they’re out of control!

I find the bigger issue to be the HOT spec in this case.

The ele spec line had alot to do with shouts, overloads and a weapon trait which is mostly useless.

Now eles are running into the problem of is it viable?

I dont know, i guess we will see when the Pro League players get back into it but Anet hasnt addressed other viable builds. Ele cant run conjure weapons, they cant run arcane and cantrips dont remove condi fast enough.

This goes for alot of classes but there are limited build options for running into a match as a solo/duo que player and with Anet putting out odd patches. Will fights be quicker? Yes but will they be fun to play? I myself have have had enough of the F2 then F1 warrior with mace applying 4 stacks of confusion 2 stacks of bleed, the necro with the chill and psn and a mesmer apply 4 stacks of torment and then adds another 6 stacks of confusion by pressing 2-3 buttons.

JETWING.2759:

One of those 2 new ammulets could has defensive status like toug/vit/heal…
2 berseck + boon duration and no one defensive…
lol Anet. Change this until the S4.
.
.
Looks like Anet just wants equalize power builds to condi builds with these 2 OP ammulets.

I would have liked a Power/ healing power toughness/concentration amulet.
A bit weaker than clerics in sustain but still interesting.

With the standard for bunkering bieng as low in some cases as Thiefs and Meditrappers, I do wonder why I’m surprised. Maby because i kinda had in the back of my mind that A-net wouldn’t do this lol.

U’d think that with dagger/dagger elementalist gone, chronobunker gone. turret engineer gone, That it would be acceptible.

U’d think that the qq would stop when condi classes were limited to carrion, viper and wanderes. but it was still not enough, because anything that doesn’t instantly die is a friggin bunker.

Even when bunkers that could bunker 2 or more easily but at the same time offer lot of support where removed. it was appearantly still not enough.

the bunkers we had before this patch was litterally one. and that was DH bunker. It offered no DPS on the table. most of it’s heals were for itself.and the heals that did have an AOE where on a decent CD. And don’t actually ignore burst. the only aegis it could give was fragments of faith, shield 4 and shield of courage, it offered no boons other then furry and had kitten dps.

That is bunker.

Auramancer on clerics could have gotten +1 and if he was competent it would have certainely died against 3 in most cases, no question about that.

Scrapper is the only other bruiser, every other class could be killed in a 1 v 1.

But yeah since thiefs can dodge everything and medi trapper can bunker. then this is the logical result.

Ellie.5913:

We were losing builds because of amulet/rune removals long before HoT came out. Anyone remember that super fun build called shout bow warrior? I had a blast with it, and it had good team support in it which is how I like to play, never been a fan of glass cannons and never will be….

Please link the balance patches long before HOT that did this.

In season 1, many shoutbow was playing Settler amulet because the sustain on celestial amulet was not good enough (the nerfed of the healing signet did make warrior bad for 2 seasons).

Celestial amulet was still a thing in season 1.

http://dulfy.net/2016/01/15/gw2-upcoming-changes-to-pvp-runessigils-and-amulets/

I didn’t understand why.

Because dd ele, the king of celestial was not working into HoT bunker creep (bunker abilities on squishi bodies for the win).

Nor Cele Engi…. it was either soldier rifle engi or marauder scrapper.

Celestial was not working on shoutbow or any other META build (that where OP for 2 years) anymore. Some druids were using it. Some necro too.

Some bunker mesmer did played with celestial, but other played Soldier or Sentinel. For the first time in Anet history you could play 3 different amulet for 1 META build.

The nerf on Mesmer bunker where enough, removing the amulet wasn’t appropriate.

They didn’t explain why they did this. They got some cheers by fanboyz for doing so, but the balanced work on ele, engi and war on celestial had been done for good.

For me, right after season 1, the big BOSS left Anet or got fired… and the NEW boss is trying to make sPVP his own.

Still… he alienated the third of the player bases that like to play support hybrid build and still do.

Jourdelune.7456:

Ellie.5913:

We were losing builds because of amulet/rune removals long before HoT came out. Anyone remember that super fun build called shout bow warrior? I had a blast with it, and it had good team support in it which is how I like to play, never been a fan of glass cannons and never will be….

Please link the balance patches long before HOT that did this.

In season 1, many shoutbow was playing Settler amulet because the sustain on celestial amulet was not good enough (the nerfed of the healing signet did make warrior bad for 2 seasons).

Celestial amulet was still a thing in season 1.

http://dulfy.net/2016/01/15/gw2-upcoming-changes-to-pvp-runessigils-and-amulets/

I didn’t understand why.

Because dd ele, the king of celestial was not working into HoT bunker creep (bunker abilities on squishi bodies for the win).

Nor Cele Engi…. it was either soldier rifle engi or marauder scrapper.

Celestial was not working on shoutbow or any other META build (that where OP for 2 years) anymore. Some druids were using it. Some necro too.

Some bunker mesmer did played with celestial, but other played Soldier or Sentinel. For the first time in Anet history you could play 3 different amulet for 1 META build.

The nerf on Mesmer bunker where enough, removing the amulet wasn’t appropriate.

They didn’t explain why they did this. They got some cheers by fanboyz for doing so, but the balanced work on ele, engi and war on celestial had been done for good.

For me, right after season 1, the big BOSS left Anet or got fired… and the NEW boss is trying to make sPVP his own.

Still… he alienated the third of the player bases that like to play support hybrid build and still do.

but to be fair the amulets werent what was broken back then but rather that Shoutbow was was broken programming levelwise

for example Bow’s burst skill applied a healing pulse with each aoe pulse each pulse healing for the equivalent of 3 bars of adrenaline at a time and it had a short cd

then you combined that with dolyak runs and healing signet healing and the insane healing scalings and there was the problem

Celtus.8456:

Give players 3000 stat points (the total number on most amulets) to spend as we see fit. And add a soft-cap if needed (like 1200 or 1500 max spent on any one stat). Or bring in PvE gear to PvP. Either way will give us more diversity and I’ll bet balance won’t really be worse.

This would help the casual crowd get bigger. The “replayability” would sky rocket. People don’t like to play the same thing over and over, except those one that want to win money. (minority of players).

We would still had META build, but it would be possible for players to choose stats/builds to counter META again.

serj.8214:

I dont see a problem with deleting cleric its like when ppl QQ about merc amulet.

Merc was a powerful Carion.

There is no replacement for Cleric.

That amulet was used to be able to take hits and cleaves while giving support to the squishie of the team. Most Cleric build are not able to kill people in 1v1 at equal skill level. So to balanced that none killing power, it was able to 1v2 for some time, but at high level of play…. the tempest had need the peels from his buddies to be able to survive the first CC stunlock chain.

JTGuevara.9018:

serj.8214:

I dont see a problem with deleting cleric its like when ppl QQ about merc amulet.

You’ve GOT to be kidding me. Clerics has been here since the BEGINNING and NOBODY had a problem with it! It is and always has been the HoT specs, they’re out of control!

What is harder rebalance all supprt build with elite trait lines in them or just delete 1 amullet. For me theres no change at all bcw ive played mender ele so for all those QQ are so funny.

morrolan.9608:

Sinmir.6504:

I think the Cleric Amulet needed to go, they got rid of Soldier, Soldier made you yourself sustainable but with Cleric people could heal 5 door breakers faster than a trebuchet could damage them. Usually hitting them twice with it is enough, a healer could pretty much negate the trebuchet damage. Magi, well it has vitality instead of toughness and precision instead of power. I can imagine a lot of healers will pay the gold and unlock it. Would like to see it go as well as it has the same healing power as Cleric so could be used to keep enemy NPCs alive pretty much indefinitely. Either that or bring back cleric but nerf the Tempest and Druid healing abilities beyond recognition. Nothing wrong with making them able to heal so that door breakers can survive an extra hit or so from the treb but not much more than that.

If they deleted an entire amulet only because of stronghold, a failed pvp map, then I would be flabbergasted.

+1 . I mean who the heck even plays Stronghold anymore other than premade groups farming pips off solo q scrubs who forgot to uncheck stronghold from their preferences?

morrolan.9608:

Sinmir.6504:

I think the Cleric Amulet needed to go, they got rid of Soldier, Soldier made you yourself sustainable but with Cleric people could heal 5 door breakers faster than a trebuchet could damage them. Usually hitting them twice with it is enough, a healer could pretty much negate the trebuchet damage. Magi, well it has vitality instead of toughness and precision instead of power. I can imagine a lot of healers will pay the gold and unlock it. Would like to see it go as well as it has the same healing power as Cleric so could be used to keep enemy NPCs alive pretty much indefinitely. Either that or bring back cleric but nerf the Tempest and Druid healing abilities beyond recognition. Nothing wrong with making them able to heal so that door breakers can survive an extra hit or so from the treb but not much more than that.

If they deleted an entire amulet only because of stronghold, a failed pvp map, then I would be flabbergasted.

Failed? Stronghold is the only PVP mode I do. Well the healing ability some classes had was over powered. I was on the treb, an ele could march the door breakers up to our outer gate, I was raining it down on them, usually hitting the DBs twice with the treb is enough to get them down. With the Ele healing them it was as if the treb was doing nothing. Something needed to be done about their insane healing ability.
Something needed to be done. Sentinel and Soldier made you able to sustain yourself but you could hardly march the door breakers through a rain of trebuchet fire as if nothing was happening with them. With high healing power some classes can.

Sinmir.6504:

morrolan.9608:

Sinmir.6504:

I think the Cleric Amulet needed to go, they got rid of Soldier, Soldier made you yourself sustainable but with Cleric people could heal 5 door breakers faster than a trebuchet could damage them. Usually hitting them twice with it is enough, a healer could pretty much negate the trebuchet damage. Magi, well it has vitality instead of toughness and precision instead of power. I can imagine a lot of healers will pay the gold and unlock it. Would like to see it go as well as it has the same healing power as Cleric so could be used to keep enemy NPCs alive pretty much indefinitely. Either that or bring back cleric but nerf the Tempest and Druid healing abilities beyond recognition. Nothing wrong with making them able to heal so that door breakers can survive an extra hit or so from the treb but not much more than that.

If they deleted an entire amulet only because of stronghold, a failed pvp map, then I would be flabbergasted.

Failed? Stronghold is the only PVP mode I do. Well the healing ability some classes had was over powered. I was on the treb, an ele could march the door breakers up to our outer gate, I was raining it down on them, usually hitting the DBs twice with the treb is enough to get them down. With the Ele healing them it was as if the treb was doing nothing. Something needed to be done about their insane healing ability.
Something needed to be done. Sentinel and Soldier made you able to sustain yourself but you could hardly march the door breakers through a rain of trebuchet fire as if nothing was happening with them. With high healing power some classes can.

Healing power amulets with healing power runes still exist so this wont necessarily go away.

Zelulose.8695:

Sinmir.6504:

morrolan.9608:

Sinmir.6504:

I think the Cleric Amulet needed to go, they got rid of Soldier, Soldier made you yourself sustainable but with Cleric people could heal 5 door breakers faster than a trebuchet could damage them. Usually hitting them twice with it is enough, a healer could pretty much negate the trebuchet damage. Magi, well it has vitality instead of toughness and precision instead of power. I can imagine a lot of healers will pay the gold and unlock it. Would like to see it go as well as it has the same healing power as Cleric so could be used to keep enemy NPCs alive pretty much indefinitely. Either that or bring back cleric but nerf the Tempest and Druid healing abilities beyond recognition. Nothing wrong with making them able to heal so that door breakers can survive an extra hit or so from the treb but not much more than that.

If they deleted an entire amulet only because of stronghold, a failed pvp map, then I would be flabbergasted.

Failed? Stronghold is the only PVP mode I do. Well the healing ability some classes had was over powered. I was on the treb, an ele could march the door breakers up to our outer gate, I was raining it down on them, usually hitting the DBs twice with the treb is enough to get them down. With the Ele healing them it was as if the treb was doing nothing. Something needed to be done about their insane healing ability.
Something needed to be done. Sentinel and Soldier made you able to sustain yourself but you could hardly march the door breakers through a rain of trebuchet fire as if nothing was happening with them. With high healing power some classes can.

Healing power amulets with healing power runes still exist so this wont necessarily go away.

Yeah, I can see a lot of them switching to Magi now, maybe if it goes as well.

And pvp will never succeed without proper balance.

Is there anyway the balance team can receive rights to balance more than just sigils amulets and runes? I feel this is limiting the team that is most involved with the community.

Also, if not you then who is responsible for the profession balance changes so we know who to ask for things and who to make suggestions to?

The balance team has worked a great deal given their limitations and it is much appreciated.

Edit: I ask who is doing what behind the scenes because the forum player base has come you the pvp team to get things fixed but apparently there is no point as you cannot change more than amulets. This is not meant to be insulting, the forum should be effective in communicating these issues to the right people.

Josh Davis.6015:

I know many of you fundamentally disagree with the removal of build items – and that’s fine. I understand where you’re coming from, but I hope you understand why we use this as a tool for balancing PvP specifically.

Problem with that is its a hugely blunt instrument. TBH when you decided to balance more by using amulets you really should have completely revised the system, say with HOT.

Josh Davis.6015:

Hey folks,

Just a quick reminder: the PvP team is not responsible for profession balance. The PvP team, along with all of the other major feature teams, provides feedback to the skills team, but the PvP team itself is not directly involved in making balance changes.

What we do have control over – however – is the build panel (sigils, amulets, runes). It’s one of the knobs we can use to push gameplay in whichever direction we feel it needs to go for that particular season. For this release, we wanted to take support down a notch and increase the pace of combat.

It’s not our intent to completely remove professions from the meta – but things do fluctuate and I think we need to give the change a bit more time to see how it plays out. Elemental Bastion being bugged since Tuesday certainly has not helped the Tempest situation, but that should be resolved fairly soon and we’ll be able to properly see how ele will fare.

I know many of you fundamentally disagree with the removal of build items – and that’s fine. I understand where you’re coming from, but I hope you understand why we use this as a tool for balancing PvP specifically.

-Grouch

Can you consider adding primary power/healing power secondary concentration/toughness?
It’s not as sustainy as clerics but helps all previous support builds including bunker guard and Ventari Revenants. (Magi’s and menders aren’t working well feels weaker than before).

Josh Davis.6015:

Hey folks,

Just a quick reminder: the PvP team is not responsible for profession balance. The PvP team, along with all of the other major feature teams, provides feedback to the skills team, but the PvP team itself is not directly involved in making balance changes.

What we do have control over – however – is the build panel (sigils, amulets, runes). It’s one of the knobs we can use to push gameplay in whichever direction we feel it needs to go for that particular season. For this release, we wanted to take support down a notch and increase the pace of combat.

It’s not our intent to completely remove professions from the meta – but things do fluctuate and I think we need to give the change a bit more time to see how it plays out. Elemental Bastion being bugged since Tuesday certainly has not helped the Tempest situation, but that should be resolved fairly soon and we’ll be able to properly see how ele will fare.

I know many of you fundamentally disagree with the removal of build items – and that’s fine. I understand where you’re coming from, but I hope you understand why we use this as a tool for balancing PvP specifically.

-Grouch

what main weapon do you think is competitive in a 5v5 arena setting with equally skilled players? Dagger – close range with no health and now no heal/toughness to be viable close range? Sceptre with its easy to avoid burst in fire and poor dmg elsewhere? staff – aoe in small team pvp?!

You took away the only spvp competitive build which was actually a forced bunker build as a result of being forced to take toughness and healing to survive in a fight, and didn’t replace it.

Fine for players who like to play other professions, for those that enjoy playing the elementalist/mage style of character, nice..

Josh Davis.6015:

Hey folks,
…
It’s not our intent to completely remove professions from the meta – but things do fluctuate and I think we need to give the change a bit more time to see how it plays out. Elemental Bastion being bugged since Tuesday certainly has not helped the Tempest situation, but that should be resolved fairly soon and we’ll be able to properly see how ele will fare.
…
-Grouch

Thanks for addressing our worries. The impression that you are at an unfair disadvantage in a competitive environment is an extremely frustrating experience.

However the issue doesn’t only have to do with numbers. The elementalist gameplay has taken multiple hits that have drastically reduced build variety and made the rotation of skills feel clunky. Fixing a bug won’t resolve all the issues that elementalists have asked to be fixed in the last year, first and foremost the lack of build variety.

I have the feeling that it is specifically because the PvP team isn’t in charge of class balance that the easiest builds to play have overtaken a game that was intended to be skill-based and about countering attacks with combos.

State of ele was obvious for months and literally wasn’t obvious for pvp team what will happen to ele? Is there no communication between pvp team and profession balance team?

It’s almost like ,,hey let’s speed up game, remove amulet! Tempest too much heals so no cleric, ele’s will make something new"

Josh Davis.6015:

Hey folks,

Just a quick reminder: the PvP team is not responsible for profession balance. The PvP team, along with all of the other major feature teams, provides feedback to the skills team, but the PvP team itself is not directly involved in making balance changes.

What we do have control over – however – is the build panel (sigils, amulets, runes). It’s one of the knobs we can use to push gameplay in whichever direction we feel it needs to go for that particular season. For this release, we wanted to take support down a notch and increase the pace of combat.

Well now I see what the problem is. How could you possibly create a good balance when you only have access to tweak sigils, amulets, and runes? And that your hands are tied at the mercy of another “skills team”?

Now I can really see why people in WvW and PvP are angry at the class balance. Because neither of these teams could really balance classes according to their proper game-modes. In my opinion, you guys really need to speak to a higher up to separate skills team into their respective game-modes, and balance them properly that way.

Josh Davis.6015:

Hey folks,

Just a quick reminder: the PvP team is not responsible for profession balance. The PvP team, along with all of the other major feature teams, provides feedback to the skills team, but the PvP team itself is not directly involved in making balance changes.

What we do have control over – however – is the build panel (sigils, amulets, runes). It’s one of the knobs we can use to push gameplay in whichever direction we feel it needs to go for that particular season. For this release, we wanted to take support down a notch and increase the pace of combat.

It’s not our intent to completely remove professions from the meta – but things do fluctuate and I think we need to give the change a bit more time to see how it plays out. Elemental Bastion being bugged since Tuesday certainly has not helped the Tempest situation, but that should be resolved fairly soon and we’ll be able to properly see how ele will fare.

I know many of you fundamentally disagree with the removal of build items – and that’s fine. I understand where you’re coming from, but I hope you understand why we use this as a tool for balancing PvP specifically.

-Grouch

Thanks for the response and the clarification. By with respect, how is the pvp team not involved with balance? The pvp team should be in the best position to handle balance, right?

I just don’t get it.

Josh Davis.6015:

Hey folks,

Just a quick reminder: the PvP team is not responsible for profession balance. The PvP team, along with all of the other major feature teams, provides feedback to the skills team, but the PvP team itself is not directly involved in making balance changes.

What we do have control over – however – is the build panel (sigils, amulets, runes). It’s one of the knobs we can use to push gameplay in whichever direction we feel it needs to go for that particular season. For this release, we wanted to take support down a notch and increase the pace of combat.

It’s not our intent to completely remove professions from the meta – but things do fluctuate and I think we need to give the change a bit more time to see how it plays out. Elemental Bastion being bugged since Tuesday certainly has not helped the Tempest situation, but that should be resolved fairly soon and we’ll be able to properly see how ele will fare.

I know many of you fundamentally disagree with the removal of build items – and that’s fine. I understand where you’re coming from, but I hope you understand why we use this as a tool for balancing PvP specifically.

-Grouch

Just how far does this “feedback” go towards the balance team and how detailed is this feedback?

From our perspective as players it doesn’t feel like the real issues are being communicated to the balance team and why they are issues at the moment. It also feels like not a lot of thought is going into questioning whether the current stance on balance is what players want.

I know I certainly would love to see more frequent (every month) and less harsh balance patches. Example being that lava font has been nerfed twice, once in recharge time to the skill and a second time via the cool down trait. It would be nice if skills/traits were only affected by one change at a time per balance patch, it will make transitions more tolerable in the long run as a class changes its defining role within the game.

I thought the entire point of separating skill balance between PvP, WvW and PvE was to ensure that situations like the current state of things would be avoided. No?

It may be ok to nerf ele dps in PvE, because enemies stand still so that even if your skills have more delay than all the other classes they still hit the target.

However in pvp we were already at a disadvantage, that’s why the class went bunker in the first place, it was near-impossible to survive in a truly competitive environment with other builds. Why would you nerf skills like lava font and skill recharge for staff in PvP? Anyone has 1 second to dodge out and staff was already underpowered. It makes no sense at all.

The first thing is to admit that you’ve done something wrong but then secondly you must react swiftly. Why should we endure such an unfair state of things for months just for a grand balance experiment gone bad?

Ask the “balance” team to (1) Buff elementalist staff CD & speed for PvP, (2) buff other skills/traits that are useless in pvp, and (3) give us celestial back because that’s the nature of the class.

Josh Davis.6015:

What we do have control over – however – is the build panel (sigils, amulets, runes). It’s one of the knobs we can use to push gameplay in whichever direction we feel it needs to go for that particular season. For this release, we wanted to take support down a notch and increase the pace of combat.

If you change the rules of the game by adding/removing sigils and runes it’s a bogus balance and all it does is to distort what is and what isn’t needed because the rules in PvE and WvW are different and actually based on the traits which you can’t touch. So PvP players think something else is needed than PvE and WvW players, the latter have to play against players who are by far more powerful than any mob in PvE, and at some point no one will know anything anymore.

(I hope you know what I’m indirectly saying – I’m not blaming you or the PvP team – thanks for clarifying this as I did wonder why “only” runes and sigils were tweaked)

Jana.6831:

If you change the rules of the game by adding/removing sigils and runes it’s a bogus balance and all it does is to distort what is and what isn’t needed because the rules in PvE and WvW are different and actually based on the traits which you can’t touch. So PvP players think something else is needed than PvE and WvW players, the latter have to play against players who are by far more powerful than any mob in PvE, and at some point no one will know anything anymore.

Yes it just creates a huge amount of confusion and means it becomes harder to untangle everything to work out whats actually needed.

Now we just have to figure out who is responsible for changing the skills currently because they do change. There is a mystery team who does these changes.

JTGuevara.9018:

Let’s review our history. We lost Minstrels, Mercenary, Soldiers and NOW Clerics.

What’s the next amulet on the chopping block? Menders? Sage? It seems like every amulet removed is a defensive one. Do we just hate defense/support? Do we just like to spam DPS to death without a second thought? At what point, do we realize, that removing amulets will NOT solve the problem? At what point do we realize the OBVIOUS problem? Balance and HoT builds.

HoT builds simply do too much damage. The amount of conditions they pump out is absurd. With the removal of clerics, it’s even WORSE. Removing clerics did nothing but kill support builds and especially Eles. We’re killing builds, folks.

well to me it’s discrimination. the discrimination of bunker build players..they hate us..and they took our amulets..and add more damage based ones..it’s nothing more then hate and discrimination against bunker, healers, and def. players